Father and Son
by BML Hillen-Keene
Summary: Helen has just dropped the biggest bombshell of all on Nick Cutter. But the one who might be affected worst of all is Connor Temple. Disclaimer: I own nothing
1. Chapter 1

_My first Primeval fic. Based off the relationship between Cutter and Connor. Whenever I see it I see it as father/son, so I just had to write this fic. I also have another weird fic idea, involving Connor of course. Is it just me, or is he totally like the saviour of the world, everyone else is just there to prepare him for the epic battle._

"So." Abby said, swinging her legs off the edge of the table, eyes tracking the back of Nick Cutter as he moved around his office, picking up and disregarding a number of post-its filled with his illegible scrawl.

"What is it Abby?" Cutter asked her, and Abby knew he was becoming annoyed at her continued presence. After all, she wasn't Connor, she knew when to take a hint and leave the man alone; especially on this matter. But Connor was the reason she was here, her flatmate had been more and more withdrawn waiting for the results of the test to come back. Abby knew the reasons why of course, which was why she was here. Connor was her friend and he deserved to know.

"If it turned out Helen was lying..." Abby began, only to stop as she realised there was no tactful was to broach the subject. Cutter had been like an angry bear since Helen had dropped her latest bombshell.

Cutter went still. "I'd be relieved."

Abby's legs stilled, and she stared wide eyed at his back, knowing that this information would break Connors heart, even if the test did come back negative. Connor idolised Cutter, any hint of disapproval sent the younger man into a frantic overdrive to prove himself. This sort of response would be devastating.

"I hope you don't intend to say that to Connor." Abby said sharply.

Cutter gave a loud sigh that made his shoulders drop. "No Abby, I don't intend to say it quite like that."

Abby's eyes narrowed. "You'd actually tell him you were relieved..." she trailed off and hopped to her feet. "And what if it turns out she wasn't lying? What would your feelings be then?"

Cutter sighed again. "Drop it Abby." he said.

"I can't Cutter. Connor's my friend, and none of this is his fault, but he's the one who's going to be most affected by this." She sighed and leaned against the table.

"What exactly is it going to help for you to know Abby? Will it somehow help Connor to know that I'd be disappointed if it turned out he really was my son? What point will any of this serve. It would just be better for all of us if Helen was really lying." Cutter snapped out, his voice strained.

There was a nervous laugh at the door, and Abby's heart sank, she could see Cutter's shoulder tense.

"Well..." Connor swallowed hard, and when Abby turned to look she could see he had heard almost every word, and just for once she wished real life was like television, where he had just misinterpreted, where the conversation had not been as damming as it was. But there was no room for that right now.

"Connor." Cutter had turned, and it was clear he was sorry for how harsh his words had sounded, but the truth of them was clear in his face.

"Well it's a good thing I checked the results before coming over." Connor blustered, trying to hide his hurt, but it was painful to see. "No need to be disappointed Professor. Turns out she was lying after all. What a relief huh?"

And Connor was in motion, waving his hands around in distracting ways, drawing all attention away from his face. "I mean, I have no clue what she was even thinking. Seriously who would ever buy you and me being related. And even thinking about it makes my head hurt, 'cause if it were true I'd only really be what? Seven? So yeah, great news this. Guess I'd better get back to work on the anomaly detector. Yeah... Talk to you later."

And he was gone, and Abby felt her heart break for him. She was just about to whirl round to Cutter, to start berating him for his insensitivity when he words caught. She had been the one to approach Cutter, the one to keep pressing. She could try and dress it up all she wanted, concern for Connor, or whatever else, but she was as much to blame right now for his hurt as Cutter.

"He's lying." Cutter said, and he suddenly looked old.

"What?" Abby managed to get out past the lump in her throat.

"He can't lie worth a damn." Cutter said, more to himself than to Abby. "Shit."

Cutter was out of the office before Abby could think to ask him where he was going. She slumped back against the table and fought the urge to cry.

Of course Helen hadn't been lying. Nick had always known; he had always been able to read her like a book. She wore her emotions on her sleeve. How he hadn't seen it before he didn't know. It seemed so damned obvious after she'd told him.

It didn't take him long to find Connor, who was typing furiously on his laptop.

He stopped and watched. He hadn't been lying about how he would feel if Connor did turn out to be his son. And he wasn't about to go over there and make excuses, because excuses would do nothing more than make Connor feel worse, and he had done enough of that for one day.

"You gonna let me see those results?" Nick asked, because there was no way of easing into this conversation.

Connor looked like a startled rabbit when he looked up. "No need surely. I mean, you got what you wanted so there's nothing else to say... or see I suppose."

"I'd still like to see them."

Connor looked away. "It'd be better if you didn't Professor."

Nick took a seat next to him and sighed. He had never considered kids, had assumed he and Helen would maybe have one or two, and he'd learn how to be a father gradually. To be suddenly faced with a grown up son, a young man he had begun to grow fond of before this knowledge came to light.

How he had not seen it before he couldn't begin to guess. He had Helen's eyes, he was filled with the same excitement as she had once been, and he was as hopelessly hopeless as he himself had been at that age. There were hundreds, thousands of other little tells that should have alerted him, but none of them had.

He wracked his brain for something to say. Something that wouldn't sound as condemning and hurtful as his previous words.

"So... you would have been seven, if she had stayed."

He couldn't stop the flat tone that crept in. There was no way to turn this into something amusing. But he knew once the words were said, and Connor flinched that they had been taken the wrong way.

"Connor, I-"

Alarms blared through the control room and Nick bit back a curse as Connor jumped up from his seat and was halfway across the room.

"Connor!" he called over the noise, and Connor froze, glancing back nervously. "We'll talk about this when we get back."

Connor gave a jerky nod and was out of the room a second later. Nick had a feeling that his talk with Connor would not go as planned. In fact, the sinking feeling in his gut was telling him that he might not get the chance to talk to Connor at all.

_I hope you enjoyed the fic. There will be at least another chapter at some point in the future._


	2. Interlude

_Alternate Nick/Connor father/son fic idea's. No related to the previous part. Consider this an interlude until I rewatch the series and get back into it again._

_Connor was found abandoned on Nick Cutters doorstep, a year old._

Nick watched Connor from the corner of his eye; not because Connor was a disruptive child; he was no more mischevious than any otherseven year old Nick had had the displeasure of meeting, in fact, Connor was far less annoying than other children his age. Nick could only put that down to the fact that he and his young son shared a love for dinosaurs, and palaeontology in all it's forms; he had been taking him with him to digs, lectures, anything and everything of interest since he had been found.

Nick didn't know why Helen had left him so suddenly eight years ago, or why she would return a year and a half later to dump their son on his doorstep. Thankfully Connor didn't really question his mothers whereabouts. He seemed content for it to just be Connor and Dad.

At the moment his son was typing away on the laptop he had salvaged from somewhere in the office; Nick thought it might have been the first one the university ever gave him that he had never used. Nick wasn't entirely sure what his child was looking up, but Stephen had assured him that the parental controls were all in place, and he was reasonably convinced it was probably dinosaurs, or aliens, or whatever had taken Connor's fancy this week. Last month it had been the Loch Ness Monster, and he hadn't stopped talking about until Nick relented and took him to Scotland for a trip round Loch Ness so he could search for himself. When no monster was sighted his son had claimed it a conspiriacy and the government was covering it up.

Where Connor got these idea's he didn't know, though he was beginning to suspect it might actually be a few of the students in his lectures. Connor always sat in on the late one's after school. He had just the other day received an abysmal dissertation on how Dinosaurs had been wiped out by Aliens.

"Dad." Connor said suddenly.

Nick looked over to see his son frowning at the computer screen. "Yeah?" he asked, wondering when exactly Connor had stopped calling him 'Daddy' all the time.

"Come look." The seven year old demanded.

Nick sighed and got up, making his way across the room to peer at the computer screen. "What am I looking at?" he asked after a moment.

"Monster sighting." Connor said with glee. "In the forest of Dean. Can we go?"

"No." was the immeadiate answer.

"Awww! Dad please!" Connor was pulling his puppy dog eyes. "It'll be fun, and I promise I'll stay beside you or Stephen this time."

"You said that last time and nearly got eaten by a crocodile." His father reminded, his blood still goes cold when he remembered their holiday in america. They had gone to Disneyland, and Nick had dragged Stephen along simply because the man hadn't stopped laughing since he'd heard. It had been a random freak thing, but Connor had wandered off and the next thing he heard was screaming. He hated people who bought exotic pets only to get rid of them in ways that would endanger kids later.

"Please Daddy?"

Nick raised his eyebrow at his sons obvious attempt at manipulation. "No."

Connor's face twisted up and he sighed, turning back to his computer. Nick turned back to his work, and would have missed his sons next words had he not become so in tune with him over the years. "Maybe we could find out why Mum left."

Nick looked over sharply, frowning deeply. He had never told Connor that the Forest of Dean was where Helen had been going the day she'd left, searching for the root of some strange occurrences. Connor had never asked about his mother, and Nick had never known what to tell him, so he had said nothing. Had he asked someone else? Stephen?... No, his friend would have told him if Connor had come to him with questions.

He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose, and knew he, Connor and Stephen would be making a trip to the Forest of Dean tomorrow.

_Father/Son Take 2: Helen raised Connor while travelling through the anomaly's_

"I can help."

Nick glanced round at the small boy who had come to stand at his elbow. He sighed and turned back to his work. He had not, as of yet, come to terms with Helen's reappearance in his life, and the son she had dumped on him before leaving again. He had taken to mostly ignoring him, and the child seemed self sufficient enough.

The boy sighed lightly when he received no answer.

Nick looked round some twenty minutes later when he realised he had not heard the child moving round the office for that amount of time. He found Connor seated on the floor holding one of his palaeontology books, fingers tracing over the pictures.

"You like dinosaurs?" he asked before he had time to think.

Connor looked up startled, and shut the book with a start, looking very guilty.

Nick stood and walked over to him, taking the book, and huffing a small laugh as he realised it was the first book on palaeontology he had ever received, when he'd first started expressing an interest in old bones and dinosaurs. "You know much about them?"

Connor shrugged. "Just what Mum would tell me if we saw them… but usually we were too busy running a…way… is something wrong?"

Nick stood stock still, trying to decide if the boy just had a really vivid imagination, or was being serious. "Saw them?" he asked.

Connor nodded enthuasistically. "Yeah, me and Mum have seen lots of dinosaurs, but we never really got to stay long. I was too little for her to study them propourly. I… she always told me that when we found a way back to you she would be able to go back and study them the way she wanted to." He looked away, sadly.

Nick ended up on the floor, sagging and staring at the dark haired boy before him. "How?" was all he could think to ask.

"'Nomalies." Connor said easily. "They're shiny things that you walk through and end up sometime else. We've been lots of places. Maybe when I'm big enough Mum will take me with her again."

Nick stopped listening as his brain went into overdrive, because Connor was telling the truth, he had seen real, live dinosaurs, and the thought of that was just so… And it explained so much… Helen's disappearance, the recent monster sightings in the Forest of Dean. He would need to look into this, he would need to find out what was going on.

Jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

Connor watched sadly as the man his mum had called his father got to his feet and walked off, back to his desk, pulling out his laptop and beginning to furiously type with one hand, they other scribbling at a page. It seemed that once again he had become and unwanted burden. Knowing it was best to just stay quiet and let his parent get on with what they were doing Connor opened the book his father had dropped and went back to leaning about the fascinating, and terrifying creatures he had seen for his entire life.

_I didn't mean for Nick to come off as so uncaring, but he just hasn't come to terms with Connor yet, and has now just learned about the anomalies._


End file.
